Voting has been an important aspect of everyday life and is a relevant part of human history. We vote to decide if Beyoncé is better than Rhianna, to decide who may win the next season of “The Voice,” and voting can even be used to decide what your organization wants to eat at the next meeting. As children, we are introduced to voting early on in our lives and it’s the go-to way to solve issues in the most fair and reasonable way. But when does our vote stop being important?
Every four years, we are allowed to vote for several important government positions and we choose those who we feel will better serve our country, our states, and where we are currently residing. These are officials who the majority feel will do their position greatly and uphold and bring whatever values we feel should be stressed in our state and our country.
At the age of 18, we are told to register to vote, as if it’s this important thing that people have died for, just so we can have that right. You can even remember as a child how exciting it was to be able to vote with your parents and even being able to act like an adult, while secretly shading the bubbles that indicated who you wanted to win the election.
Every time around the same year, we are greeted with the same people who constantly stress us to register to vote and follow up by actually voting. The same annoying commercials seem to find their ways on television, and it’s obvious that each candidate cares more about bashing their candidate and finding minuscule mistakes instead of working on their own issues.
Voting seems utterly useless, especially when the side you lean for never wins an election or your state leans a way further than your party. Voting is also pointless because the candidate you want is going to win anyway, so there’s honestly no point in voting because we can be for sure. So again, why should we vote?
The following paragraphs are common excuses I’ve come across whenever the topic of voting is talked about, and I’m here to tell you that there is NO excuse to not vote.
This reasoning to vote is constantly brought up, but I feel as if it will always be relevant. People have fought and died for your right to vote. You are being given an opportunity to speak up in ways they weren’t allowed to and to not vote because of our own laziness or apathy is dishonoring the sacrifices they have made.
When one person says that their vote doesn’t matter, that means that hundreds and thousands of people believe the exact same idea that you currently hold. Those thousands of people could sway the entire election process a certain way–but they remain silent and choose to continue complaining that our country is being ran the wrong way.
No matter if you are republic, democratic, independent, etc. you clearly want something to be brought to this country and voting is one of the top ways of doing that. And why complain if you didn’t bother voting in the first place? How can you talk about the unimportance of voting if you didn’t bother registering or even getting up and going to the polls?
Voting for our government officials isn’t something that we do very often and at most we vote one a year. A LOT can happen in a year and policies can come and go. If you didn’t like the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare as some call it) and didn’t vote for the other candidate because you “knew” that President Obama was going to win, then you really don’t have the right to complain because it’s something he talked about in his earlier campaign. The same argument can be brought up with the heavy amounts of people that dislike Mitch McConnell or Rand Paul, but didn’t bother voting when finding out that he was up by a heavy amount when the polls were released. We are a filled with a country of people who would rather complain than actual stand up for their beliefs and that’s not how we were founded and go to where we are today.
Do your American-given duty and vote whenever you are given the chance. Don’t continue being within the large group of people who don’t feel as if voting is important, or that number will continue to get larger and we’ll continue having government members who we know shouldn’t be in office.
